UAB Student Sonja Brooks Named 2007 Goldwater Scholar

University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Honors Program student Sonja Brooks, 19, of Madison, has been selected as a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar for the academic year 2007-2008.

Posted on April 4, 2007 at 9:45 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Honors Program student Sonja Brooks, 19, of Madison, has been selected as a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar for the academic year 2007-2008.

Goldwater Scholars are selected on the basis of academic merit. Recent Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 69 Rhodes scholarships, 86 Marshall awards and numerous other distinguished fellowships. One- and two-year Goldwater scholarships cover tuition, fees, books and room and board up to $7,500 per year.

Brooks is one of 317 students selected from a field of 1,110 mathematics, science and engineering students nominated from colleges and universities nationwide. She is the fifth UAB student to receive the award. She is one of five Alabama residents selected to receive the Goldwater scholarship this year.

Brooks, a sophomore with a 4.0 grade point average, is majoring in chemistry, with an emphasis in biochemistry. She plans to earn a doctorate and to conduct research.

Under the guidance of David Graves, Ph.D., a professor in the UAB Department of Chemistry, she is working on a project studying the binding of quadruplex DNA with various drugs.

Brooks is a chemistry scholar for the Department of Chemistry. Her duties include working as a teaching assistant. This summer, Brooks will participate in a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD)-summer internship program at the prestigious Max-Planck-Institute in Heidelburg, Germany, where she will study adaptor proteins and their effects on cells. The DAAD-RISE internship is funded by the German Academic Exchange Program, which draws applicants from around the world.

She has won several other academic honors, including the George Siebels Jr. Scholarship, the Charles Ireland Scholarship and she is a member of the Alpha Lamda Delta Honor Society.

Brooks is president of the student affiliate of the American Chemical Society. She also is co-chairwoman of the UAB Honors Program activities committee.

Brooks is a 2005 graduate of Bob Jones High School in Madison. She is the daughter of Eugenia and Vollon Brooks of Madison.


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